Latest Analysis and Commentary
by Pete Hoekstra • May 5, 2024 at 5:00 am
"What makes the future in this case darker is Sudan's history of hosting extremists and jihadists from the far right and far left. During the previous regime, Sudan hosted Osama bin Laden, leader of Al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, and Carlos the Jackal. This warm embrace of violent extremists earned Sudan a spot on the list of state sponsors of terrorism."— Areej Elhag, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, January 31, 2024. The bottom line for America and Europe is that the strategy of engaging and appeasing Iran has failed miserably. The U.S. and Europe must step up now to counter Iran's efforts in the Middle East and Sudan. We cannot allow new "proxies of terror" for Iran.
Bloomberg reported on January 24 that Iran has been supplying the Sudanese Armed Forces, led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, with military drones. Iran has also been teaching the Sudanese how to make them locally. Both the Iranian and Sudanese regimes, by a security cooperation agreement signed last month, have becomes an additional threat to Israel, to the region, and to the national security of the United States and its allies. Pictured: Al-Burhan in Gedaref State, Sudan, on April 10, 2024. (Photo by AFP via Getty Images)
While the Biden administration is preoccupied trying to win re-election this November, as well as putting out a series of fires it helped start in Ukraine, the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific, a new area of urgent concern, largely flying under the public's radar, has been brewing: Iran's increasing penetration of Sudan. Pocketing Sudan would provide Iran with more oil, gold and rare minerals, as well as another port on Red Sea from which to continue blocking maritime commercial passage. Sudan would also provide Iran with proximity to Israel, and serve as an additional launching pad from which to swarm Israel with more lethal drone attacks – at least until its nuclear weapons program is complete. Iran could also add Sudan to the list of the four other countries it already effectively controls in the region: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen.
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by Amir Taheri • May 5, 2024 at 4:00 am
We cite the 1991 date because it was at its very end that one of the most famous foreign correspondents, Terry Anderson of the Associated Press, was released after 2,454 days of being held hostage by Hezbollah in Beirut, Lebanon. Anderson passed away aged 76 last month, by sheer coincidence, just days before World Press Freedom Day on May 3. Covering what all those actors did was no easy task. The smallest risk was that they would treat you like mushrooms, keeping you in the dark and feeding you bullshit. But there were bigger risks, including being caught in crossfire or targeted for assassination, as several Lebanese journalists had been. The entry of Iran's mullahs in the Lebanese game introduced a new risk: being seized as hostage and used as a bargaining chip in haggling with the American "Great Satan" and its smaller French and British companions. Anderson was seized on a Saturday after a game of tennis with his AP photographer, Don Mell. AP's star reporter was to spend the next seven years often kept in the dark, subjected to severe beatings and chained to a radiator. His captors wanted him to confess to being a CIA spy. Years later, Mell asked Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah's chief, why he had been released quickly. "Do you fish?" Nasrallah asked. "If you catch a big one, you throw the other ones back." Anderson had been the big fish, as every foreign correspondent, before and after Joel McCrea, dreams of becoming.
Journalist Terry Anderson of the Associated Press, was released in 1991 after 2,454 days of being held hostage by Hezbollah in Beirut, Lebanon. Anderson passed away aged 76 last month, by sheer coincidence, just days before World Press Freedom Day on May 3. Pictured: Anderson waves during a press conference in Damascus, Syria on December 4, 1991, the day he was released from Hezbollah captivity. (Photo by Amr Nabil/AFP via Getty Images)
As the first rumblings of war are heard from Europe, the editor of a major American newspaper decides to send a reporter to the old continent to see what is going on. He wants "our best and brightest" for the job and finds it in John Jones, arousing the jealousy of older and more experienced reporters. This is the opening of "Foreign Correspondent," Alfred Hitchcock's fast-paced 1940 film with Joel McCrea in the title role. The idea that you need your best and brightest as a foreign correspondent existed before McCrea faced Hitchcock's camera and has continued ever since. However, working as foreign correspondent didn't remain the exciting, risk-free and glamorous role that the old movie implies. To be sure, the exciting aspect has remained, along with fading shades of glamour. But the job is no longer risk-free and, in more and more cases, could even lead to death. Since 1991, over 2,600 reporters have been killed in the line of duty, so to speak.
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by Majid Rafizadeh • May 4, 2024 at 5:00 am
Never before have sanctions been so ostentatiously disregarded without any seeming awareness by those violating them of the possible consequences. The US administration, it appears, has actually been funding Iran to attack Israel and itself. The Biden administration has provided a lifeline to the Iranian regime by providing it with much-needed financial relief to export more oil and terror.
The Biden administration has provided a lifeline to the Iranian regime by providing it with much-needed financial relief to export more oil and terror. (Image source: iStock)
The evasions of US sanctions by Iran and its allies – largely thanks to the Biden administrations' sanctions waivers -- mark a new chapter in America's history. Never before have sanctions been so ostentatiously disregarded without any seeming awareness by those violating them of the possible consequences. Flouting international agreements not only undermines the integrity of the sanctions themselves but has also been demolishing the authority and credibility of the US administration. The problem is that such ostentatious flouting of sanctions has been producing a global lack of respect for the United States. Such derision has been transforming the once formidable reputation of the US into little more than a punchline, and, in the eyes of allies and adversaries alike, reducing America's stature to that of an attractive target.
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by Robert Williams • May 3, 2024 at 5:00 am
"Hamas sees Western countries such as Germany as a refuge in which the organization can concentrate on collecting donations, recruiting new supporters, and spreading its propaganda." — Germany's domestic intelligence service, apnews.com, November 23, 2023. In February, Belgium's justice minister confirmed that Hamas operates in Brussels... through a network of front companies raising funds for the terrorist organization... Belgian authorities nevertheless continue to allow Hamas to operate there. "Hamas has been in Europe for about 30 years. It's an open secret. Of course, they don't call themselves Hamas... They will have names like Conference of Palestinians Abroad, Palestinians in (country name), Palestinian Students Abroad, and so on. But when you dig a bit, you find out who the people are behind these associations, and what their connections are back home. It's always the same cluster of 20-25 people. Their propaganda, their social media patterns, everything is Hamas." — Lorenzo Vidino, director of the program on extremism at George Washington University, April 12, 2024. "This is a typical Muslim Brotherhood tactic. They come up with a million different names for their organizations, for two reasons: Firstly, they want to give the impression that it's a broad movement, so that when they organize a public event, there will be 50 participating organizations, or if they publish a public letter, there will be 50 signatory groups. Secondly, if one of these groups is taken down by law enforcement, well, there's all the other ones." — Lorenzo Vidino, April 12, 2024. In all of this, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is a central actor. As stated by the US Congress, the IRGC "trains, funds, arms, and shares intelligence with dangerous proxy forces throughout the Middle East and abroad" and has targeted both European and American civilians. The US Congress, Israel and thousands of Iranians have urged the European Union to designate the IRGC as a terrorist organization. Last year, by an overwhelming majority, the European Parliament passed a resolution to that effect, but the EU nevertheless refuses to designate the IRGC as a terrorist organization. EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell claims there are legal obstacles; however, that claim has been refuted as a lie. Iran has ballistic missiles that can reach Europe, and is one minute away from nuclear weapons capability, if not already there.
The terrorist threat to Europe from the Islamic Republic of Iran -- and Hamas and Hezbollah, its proxies -- is growing. In the past five years, Iran has been behind at least 33 terrorist plots in Europe. There are, it is estimated, 450 Hamas operatives in Germany alone. (Image source: iStock/Getty Images)
The terrorist threat to Europe from the Islamic Republic of Iran -- and Hamas and Hezbollah, its proxies -- is growing. European leaders, however, are absorbed with trying to prevent Israel from eliminating the military capabilities of Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, even though that would diminish the ability of these terrorists to operate in Europe. Even before the October 7 massacre in Israel by Hamas, Mossad Director David Barnea said in September 2023 that Israel's intelligence services, in cooperation with their foreign partners, had prevented 27 terrorist attacks orchestrated by the Iran just over the last year, "all over the world, in Europe, Africa, the Far East and South America."
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by Bassam Tawil • May 2, 2024 at 5:00 am
[T]he Iran-backed Hamas terror group is again trying to dupe gullible Westerners, including the Biden administration and the European Union, into believing that it has accepted the "two-state solution." The Hamas official would not have dared to utter similar nonsense to an Arab media outlet. He knows that here his lies are directed at English-speaking audiences, who tend to swallow whole the baloney spouted by Israel's enemies. The Hamas official wants everyone to believe that his group is ready to stop killing Jews for a period of five years "or more" if it gets the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem. He just forgot to mention that there was an official truce between Israel and Hamas until October 7, when the terror group Hamas initiated the current war. The Hamas official also forgot to mention that Hamas has repeatedly violated several truces and ceasefire agreements reached with Israel over the past 17 years. The truces and ceasefires were always used by Hamas to regroup and rearm in preparation for the next round of attacking Israel. Hamas will never abandon its weapons or dismantle its armed group, especially after the establishment of a Palestinian state The mere talk about a Palestinian state these days is regarded as a reward for Hamas's genocidal assault on Israel. It sends the message to Hamas that after you murdered so many Jews, the international community will reward you by giving you a state. It reaffirms that terrorism works. Where do we sign up? The secret that the AP and the US administration do not want you to know is that Hamas does not actually want the Gaza Strip or the West Bank or east Jerusalem. Hamas wants to eliminate Israel and replace it with an Iran-backed Islamist terror state. If Hamas and the Palestinian Authority are given a state next to Israel, they will absolutely continue to pursue their goal of killing Jews and obliterating Israel. Hamas official Ghazi Hamad has clearly said that the terror group will repeat the October 7 attack, time and again, until Israel is annihilated. Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal has repeatedly clarified that his group's acceptance of a Palestinian state does not mean that it will abandon its goal of destroying Israel. "The lines below are for the next person who comes to me with 'Hamas agreed to two state solution.' It DID NOT! Hamas outlines this scenario fully in its Charter as amended in 2017.... Hamas will likely then stock as much rockets and drones possible for the next round of war to destroy Israel.... Prophet Muhammad is said to have entered into a 10-year truce with the infidels. He conquered them a few years into the truce. Hamas imagines a similar scenario with Israel." — Hussain Abdul-Hussain, X, April 25, 2024. Hamas is well aware of the credulity of the international community. It knows that it can engage in all forms of propaganda and win friends in the West. It also knows that the best vehicle to advance its goal of killing Jews and destroying Israel is a "two-state solution."
If Hamas and the Palestinian Authority are given a state next to Israel, they will absolutely continue to pursue their goal of killing Jews and obliterating Israel. Hamas official Ghazi Hamad has clearly said that the terror group will repeat the October 7 attack, time and again, until Israel is annihilated. Pictured: Hamad is interviewed on October 24, 2023 on LBC TV (Lebanon). (Image source: MEMRI)
After slaughtering 1,200 Israelis and kidnapping 240 others on October 7, 2023, the Iran-backed Hamas terror group is again trying to dupe gullible Westerners, including the Biden administration and the European Union, into believing that it has accepted the "two-state solution." The solution envisages the creation of a sovereign and independent Palestinian state next to Israel, on the entire lands of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem. The latest Hamas deception came in the form of statements made by Khalil al-Hayya, a senior official of the group, in an interview with Associated Press (AP). "A top Hamas political official told The Associated Press the Islamic militant group is willing to agree to a truce of five years or more with Israel and that it would lay down its weapons and convert into a political party if an independent Palestinian state is established along pre-1967 borders," AP reported on April 25, 2024.
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by Lawrence Kadish • May 1, 2024 at 5:58 pm
The United States needs to return to strategic energy independence. Through state-of-the art technology, we now have the means of not only meeting our domestic needs, but the ability to export oil to our allies. Doing so would replace the Russians and Iranians, whose energy stockpiles continue to be wielded as weapons against the West. Pictured: An oil derrick in Monahans, Texas, in the oil- and gas-producing Permian Basin, on March 27, 2024. (Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
Plagued with inept leadership, a fractured society, and an unstable economy, the once powerful, centuries-old Ottoman Empire was described by early 20th century contemporaries as the sick man of Europe. And then it collapsed into the dustbin of history. America, take note. Consider what medicine needs to be administered in Washington to prevent a fatal malaise from taking down a great nation, for no country is immune to the Ottoman infection. For the United States, it begins with returning to strategic energy independence. Through state-of-the art technology, we now have the means of not only meeting our domestic needs, but the ability to export oil to our allies. Doing so would replace the Russians and Iranians, whose energy stockpiles continue to be wielded as weapons against the West.
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by Con Coughlin • May 1, 2024 at 5:00 am
[D]espite the clear and present threat Iran poses to the security of both the Middle East and the wider world, Western governments are still proving reluctant to take any measures needed to cripple the Iranian economy. A key factor in the reluctance of Western leaders to punish Iran for its aggression is the appeasement policy the Biden administration has pursued towards Iran in recent years in the naive hope that, by going easy on Iran, the Iranian regime might be persuaded to agree to a new deal on its nuclear activities. "The Iranians have mastered the art of sanctions circumvention. If the Biden administration is really going to have an impact, it has to shift the focus to China." — Fernando Ferreira, head of geopolitical risk service at the Rapidan Energy Group, Financial Times, April 17, 2024. If the West is really serious about holding Iran to account for its aggressive activities, then it... should include the possibility of imposing secondary sanctions against any country that continues to do business with Tehran in defiance of Western sanctions. Without Chinese oil imports, for example, the Iranian oil industry would most likely collapse, thereby increasing the pressure on the Iranian regime to mend its ways.
(Image source: iStock/Getty Images)
If attempts by Western leaders to impose further sanctions against Iran in retaliation for its direct attack against Israel are to have any validity, they will need to be a great deal more effective than those implemented in recent decades. For decades, the US and its allies have been imposing sanctions against Tehran in an attempt to restrain its malign support for terror organisations, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza. Wide-ranging sanctions have also been imposed against Tehran to curb its nuclear programme, which most Western intelligence agencies believe is ultimately aimed at fulfilling the Iranian regime's quest to acquire a nuclear weapons arsenal. This has led to restrictions being placed on Iran's ability to access technology and material that might be used to aid its nuclear development, while a range of other economic sanctions, especially limiting Iran's ability to export oil, have been implemented.
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by Gordon G. Chang • April 30, 2024 at 5:00 am
"This was more than a slight. Aside from a calculated insult to the dignity of the United States, the move indicates Xi Jinping is making clear that the accepted norms of diplomacy will not be respected by China anymore." — Charles Burton, former Canadian diplomat who served in Beijing, to Gatestone Institute, April 27, 2024. Blinken was in China to discuss the growing list of disagreements between Washington and Beijing. Not surprisingly, he did not accomplish anything there other than register America's complaints on matters such as Beijing's support for the Russian war effort in Ukraine and unfair treatment of U.S. companies. On every major issue, the U.S. and China take different sides, and the Chinese have clearly dug in. Blinken was reduced to begging. America is resorting to the dialogue-is-progress narrative.... In substance, therefore, Blinken in Beijing continued talking about talking. There is no question that AI is an important topic, especially when it comes to the control of nuclear weapons. Yet this does not mean the U.S. should seek an agreement with China on that topic. Burton and Weichert point out that China never honors agreements, so any deal with Beijing is akin to a unilateral promise. The risk now is that the Biden administration will trade away its restrictions for meaningless promises from China's Communists. "China is deeply committed to the weaponization of AI and would be counting its lucky communist star if the Americans basically deterred themselves with such a protocol," Weichert, also author of Biohacked: China's Race to Control Life, added. The secretary of state should never have gone to China in the first place.
The risk now is that the Biden administration will trade away its restrictions for meaningless promises from China's Communists. Pictured: China's President Xi Jinping greets US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Beijing on April 26, 2024. (Photo by Mark Schiefelbein/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)
It is not clear whether a Chinese official was at the Beijing airport to bid farewell to Secretary of State Antony Blinken as he ended his three-day visit to China on Friday, but the send-off was in any event low-key and Chinese leader Xi Jinping slighted America's top diplomat at the end of his troubled stay. Also, China, literally and figuratively, did not roll out the red carpet for his arrival in Shanghai on Wednesday. Only a low-level official was on hand to greet Blinken as he stepped off the plane. "The Chinese government flouted international protocols at the airport on the secretary of state's arrival in Shanghai and departure from Beijing," Charles Burton of the Prague-based Sinopsis think tank told Gatestone. "It was petty."
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by Daniel Greenfield • April 30, 2024 at 4:00 am
Columbia University, whose Hamas occupation fills the front pages of every newspaper in the country while driving Jewish students off campus, has changed little in some ways. A hundred years ago, Columbia University President Nicholas Murray Butler was laboring to keep Jewish students out while celebrating Mussolini's fascism. They weren't liberals then and they're not liberals now.... A century ago they believed that human beings were defined by race and they still believe it now. What does Hamas offer the Ivy League? Much like Nazism and Communism, it believes that America, individualism and free enterprise are worthless.... The one thing that the Ivy League can agree on is that the world should be run by the right sorts of people and that they are just the right sort of people to run it. [T]tomorrow they will be cheering once again for race riots burning down cities or for some new evil wave of terror. That hatred is why the Ivy League has always been so easy to radicalize with a steady drip-feed of students eager to be taught that everything they grew up with is a sham, that nothing can be trusted and that the only way to save the world is to put them in charge of managing it. Generations of Ivy Leaguers have been told at ponderous graduation ceremonies that they are the hope of tomorrow, and that history has tasked them with solving the troubles of the nation and the world by implementing the dogma of the moment. No king was more blatantly endowed with the right to rule without the fitness for it than these puffed up and well-connected children. Each ruling class is more vicious, hollow and inept than the last. From cheering Nazis to cheering Hamas, the only thing the Ivy League elites have learned is an appetite for destruction.
Columbia University, whose Hamas occupation fills the front pages of every newspaper in the country while driving Jewish students off campus, has changed little in some ways. A hundred years ago, Columbia University President Nicholas Murray Butler was laboring to keep Jewish students out while celebrating Mussolini's fascism. Butler's admiration for fascism was common among university presidents, leaders of society and even in the FDR administration. Pictured: Butler, circa 1930. (Photo by NBC Television/Getty Images)
The Nazi cheers of "Sieg Heil" didn't start out in Munich, but in Massachusetts. The Nazi chant was borrowed from Harvard football cheers and imported to Germany by Ernst "Putzy" Hanfstaengl, a Harvard man in good standing who befriended Hitler and helped build a more respectable brand for the National Socialists. "Putzy" was one of a number of Ivy League elites who were enchanted by the Third Reich. Socialism forcefully implemented by great men, whether it was FDR, Mussolini, Stalin or Hitler, was the great obsession of America elites of the era who were convinced that it was the only answer to the chaos of capitalism and the hurly burly of democracy and technology.
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by Bassam Tawil • April 29, 2024 at 5:00 am
For these Arabs, including some Palestinians, there is nothing "pro-Palestinian" about supporting the Iran-backed Hamas terrorist group.... Those who are chanting "we are all Hamas" on the streets of New York and U.S. college campuses are not helping the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip even slightly. They are being used as human shields by the terrorist group Hamas in its genocidal war against Israel and Jews." — Loay Al-Shareef, social media influencer from the United Arab Emirates, X, April 23, 2024. "You would not survive a day in Gaza under Hamas, which demands that 'infidels' live with dignity only if they are subordinate to Islamists.... You do not understand Arabic, nor do you know Islam well enough to comprehend what awaits you if Hamas prevails (God forbid)." — Loay Al-Shareef, X, April 23, 2024. "[Y]ou would also be the target of hatred because radical Islamists like Hamas believe in eternal enmity towards Jews and Christians. They interpret the Quranic verse ("O you who believe, never take Jews and Christians as friends," as timeless, applicable to all Jews and Christians forever." — Loay Al-Shareef, X, April 23, 2024. "Hamas' approach, in other words, has been a disaster for Palestinians in Gaza.... If universities cannot instil their students with peaceful, tolerant, and coexistent attitudes, then they have failed as institutions of higher learning." — John Aziz, a British-Palestinian writer, Jewish Chronicle, April 22, 2024. "Violence has failed us for decades, and the only way to accomplish justice for Palestinians is through peace." — Hamza Howidy, Palestinian from Gaza, X, April 25, 2024. By blocking the three Palestinian social media influences, the SJP, which claims to seek justice for the Palestinians, is proving that it does not care about freedom of speech for the Palestinians and is as intolerant as Hamas and other terrorist groups to criticism. "The Muslim Brotherhood is a cancer on every university campus." – Amjad Taha, Emirati researcher and journalist, X, April 23, 2024.
While protesters at Columbia University and Yale University celebrate Hamas and its "resistance" (a euphemism for violence and terrorism), Arabs have been ridiculing the "pro-Palestinian" demonstrators on American college campuses. For these Arabs, including some Palestinians, there is nothing "pro-Palestinian" about supporting the Iran-backed Hamas terrorist group. Pictured: An anti-Israel protester shouts slogans on the campus of City College of New York on April 25, 2024. (Photo by Kena Betankur/AFP via Getty Images)
While protesters at Columbia University and Yale University celebrate Hamas and its "resistance" (a euphemism for violence and terrorism), Arabs have been ridiculing the "pro-Palestinian" demonstrators on American college campuses. For these Arabs, including some Palestinians, there is nothing "pro-Palestinian" about supporting the Iran-backed Hamas terrorist group, whose members slaughtered 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped more than 240 others on October 7, 2023. It is also ironic that the current wave of protests on US college campuses comes at a time when most Palestinian and Arab universities remain quiet. One would have expected to see such protests at university campuses in the West Bank and several Arab countries. True, there were some relatively small protests at a few universities in Jordan and Egypt, but they did not come close to the wave of antisemitism sweeping college campuses in the US.
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by Raymond Ibrahim • April 28, 2024 at 6:00 am
[O]n March 25, the Lahore High Court in Pakistan awarded custody of a 13-year-old Christian girl to her Muslim kidnapper. Charges were filed, "but instead of arresting the two suspects, police tipped them off .... Since that time, they have been threatening me and my mother to withdraw the case or face the consequences." – Morning Star News, March 8, 2024, Pakistan. "Christians are obviously a despised minority [in Yemen]... Christians are often last in line as it relates to being able to receive the care and attention there as war and as these things continue to escalate. That has a ripple effect ... while Christians were already last [in] line, that line becomes even further elongated." — Open Doors USA CEO Ryan Brown, Christian Broadcasting Network, March 8, 2024. "I thought it only happened elsewhere." — Mayor of Clermont d'Excideuil, France, March 11, 2024.
On March 25, the Lahore High Court in Pakistan awarded custody of a 13-year-old Christian girl to her Muslim kidnapper. Pictured: The Lahore High Court. (Photo by Arif Ali/AFP via Getty Images)
The Muslim Slaughter of Christians Russia: On March 22, Muslim terrorists armed with automatic weapons launched an attack on Crocus City Hall near Moscow, massacring at least 139 people and wounding more. Boasting of "killing Christians," ISIS quickly claimed the attack in a statement that said the assault was intentionally designed to target "thousands of Christians." Two months earlier, ISIS issued a communique to the "Lions of Islam" — presumably Muslim "avengers" around the world — to terrorize and slaughter Christians and Jews, including by targeting churches and synagogues. An excerpt follows:
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by Lawrence Kadish • April 28, 2024 at 4:30 am
(Image source: iStock/Getty Images)
We might start by returning to energy independence. The climate would not be hurt one bit: The US has plenty of oil under the ground; we can extract it more cleanly than anyone. Instead, we are paying exorbitant prices to, say, Russia for oil that is far dirtier, while the Chinese Communist Party are opening two new coal plants a week. The result, in terms of clean air, is therefore currently either net-zero or, thanks to "protecting" the planet from America's clean oil, actually down. Additionally, the US outlay for buying overpriced foreign oil and gas for immediate domestic use has simply served to finance both Russia's war on Ukraine, and Iran and Hamas's war on Israel. If the US were to start drilling, refining and exporting oil again, its price would go back down to $40 or $50 a barrel, nearly half its current $83 – and Russia and Iran, soon unable to afford their global aggression, would be forced to stop.
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by Amir Taheri • April 28, 2024 at 4:00 am
[A]ny regime's foreign policy is basically a continuation of its domestic policies. The Khomeinist revolution's ambition was to transform the Iranian society into a vehicle for "exporting revolution" which, as "Supreme Guide" Ayatollah Ali Khamenei often asserts, is the fundamental goal of the regime. The hitch is that, as the old generation of revolutionaries, a hodgepodge of leftist and religious zealots, fades away, younger Iranians have no interest in exporting any ideology or building an empire. They just want to live "the Iranian way" by which they mean a nostalgia-generated vision of the past. In today's Iran, rappers... like Saman Yasin end up in prison, or like Toomaj Salehi are sentenced to death.
In today's Iran, rappers like Saman Yasin end up in prison, or like Toomaj Salehi are sentenced to death. Pictured: Protesters hold signs to show solidarity with Salehi, who was sentenced to death in Iran for supporting anti-government protests, on April 25, 2024 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Ali Khaligh/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)
Over the past half a century, what is called "Iranology" has developed into a global industry with dozens of think-tanks, institutes, faculties and pressure groups trying to understand and explain what is going on in the Islamic Republic created by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979. Patterned on Kremlinology, a bustling industry during the Cold War, Iranology ignored Iran's history and culture and assumed that rather than being an epiphenomenon like Bolshevism turned out to be, the Islamic Republic is a true and thus permanent expression of Iranian nationhood. Also like Kremlinology, Iranologists used and abused a number of terms to sustain its claim of expertise: Shi'ism, taqiyah, source of emulation, fatwa, revolutionary Islam etc. Noam Chomsky, one of the most ardent admirers of the Islamic Republic, also added "people-based" and "anti-Imperialist" to the list.
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by Majid Rafizadeh • April 27, 2024 at 5:00 am
By backing, arming and training Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, Iran launched a proxy war against Israel, leveraging the conflict in part to divert attention from its nuclear ambitions. The calculated move not only serves Iran's immediate interests in destabilizing its adversaries – the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bahrain and most of all the United States, which it would like to see out of the region, so Iran could presumably have the Middle East all to itself. The diversion of the Gaza war also aligns with its goal of eradicating Israel. These barbaric perversions [by Hamas on October 7, 2023] underscore Iran's leaders' comfort, if not pleasure, in employing any means at hand to achieve their objectives. They most likely do not look at their devastation abroad as triggering instability, but, on the contrary, as a means to attaining its hegemony, after which there will be peace -- for themselves, at least. From Iran's perspective, acquiring nuclear weapons is the easiest way to significantly complete its takeover of the region and "export the revolution": "We shall export the revolution to the whole world. Until they cry, 'there is no god but God [Allah]' resounds over the whole world, there will be struggle." Unfortunately, the plan poses an existential threat not just to regional stability, but to global security. Iran has been moving into Latin America, possibly to target the "Great Satan," the United States.
In the midst of the Hamas-Israel conflict -- while the world's attention is fixed on the war Iran and Hamas began -- Iran's ruling mullahs have seized the opportunity to advance their nuclear program. (Image source: iStock/Getty Images)
In the midst of the Hamas-Israel conflict -- while the world's attention is fixed on the war Iran and Hamas began -- Iran's ruling mullahs have seized the opportunity to advance their nuclear program. By backing, arming and training Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, Iran launched a proxy war against Israel, leveraging the conflict in part to divert attention from its nuclear ambitions. The calculated move not only serves Iran's immediate interests in destabilizing its adversaries – the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bahrain and most of all the United States, which it would like to see out of the region, so Iran could presumably have the Middle East all to itself. The diversion of the Gaza war also aligns with its goal of eradicating Israel. While the mullahs' proxies wage war on the front lines against the "Little Satan," Israel, Iran has been maneuvering in the shadows, exploiting the chaos to make significant strides in its nuclear capabilities.
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by Alan M. Dershowitz • April 26, 2024 at 5:00 am
Some of the signs say "pro-Palestine", "ceasefire now" and "end the humanitarian crisis in Gaza". But these benign statements hide a far more malignant agenda, the end of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, the end of America as the world's leading power and the end of democracy and the free market economy. Even if there were a unilateral ceasefire, accompanied by massive humanitarian assistance to the people of Gaza, many of these protests would continue, because Gaza is merely an excuse for a much wider agenda: to destroy Israel and destroy America. One never sees a sign calling for a two-state solution or for peace between Israel and the Palestinians. These are not the goals. What is demanded is the end of any Jewish presence in the Middle East. "Death to America," similarly, means the end of America's influence and Western values. Many of the signs call for "revolution." These are not directed against Israel, but rather against America, American Jews and all other Western democracies. As in the 1960s, many of these students are being groomed to be the terrorists of the future -- in the manner of Kathy Boudin and Bernardine Dohrn back then – and, in the United States, a fifth column, the aim of which is taking down America. That these useful idiots are young does not make them less dangerous. Young students were instrumental in bringing to power tyrants such as Hitler, Stalin, Castro, Pol Pot and Mao. Where are the armed guards escorting Jewish students to class, as there were escorting the threatened Black youths to integrated school in the 1960s in the South? Universities are failing not only their Jewish students but all their students by refusing to educate them about what behavior is acceptable and what is not.
Some of the signs say "pro-Palestine", "ceasefire now" and "end the humanitarian crisis in Gaza". But these benign statements hide a far more malignant agenda, the end of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, the end of America as the world's leading power and the end of democracy and the free market economy. Pictured: Pro-Hamas and anti-Israel protesters outside of Columbia University on April 24, 2024 in New York City. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
Thousands of young students – from universities, high schools and even middle schools – are joining in demonstrations, marches and protests against Israel, against the United States and against Jews. Some even are Jews. They are joining Muslim and Arab anti-Zionists, radical anarchist anti-Americans and community organizers who oppose Israel's right to exist. Some of the signs say "pro-Palestine", "ceasefire now" and "end the humanitarian crisis in Gaza". But these benign statements hide a far more malignant agenda, the end of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, the end of America as the world's leading power and the end of democracy and the free market economy. Even if there were a unilateral ceasefire, accompanied by massive humanitarian assistance to the people of Gaza, many of these protests would continue, because Gaza is merely an excuse for a much wider agenda: to destroy Israel and destroy America.
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